AI & Writing

Before you jump in with your stern rebuttals and disgust that I am even asking that, think a little deeper about it. The truth of the matter and the answer is possibly far more uncomfortable than you would imagine. It all depends on how you use AI and why.

Writing has long been linked with struggle. Think blank pages. Think false starts. Think drafts that don’t quite make it. Think writer’s block. See – struggle. These struggles are almost a badge of honour for a writer; ones that we’ve all worn at some time. But now let’s add AI into the mix. Something that has the potential to smooth that process of struggle for us. Something that takes those struggles and gives us a way off the blank page. Something that maybe even accelerates our writing. Does writing now become easier and is that easier cheapened by the use of AI? Does it surprise you that I am going to say, not necessarily.

Now before you start rolling your eyes and shouting at the screen, hear me out. Roll the clock back a few years. We have been here before with new “inventions.” What’s AI, but an invention in a different guise?

Typewriters were invented and claims were made that they impersonalised everything and that the handwritten letters would be gone. Spellcheck. Another invention. This one was accused of dulling the mind, not making us work for our writing. The thesaurus. Yet another invention that has been blamed for turning writing straightforward sentences into a performance of words. Each time a new ‘invention’ appears, the fear is there. Will the invention replace the skill? Yet every time, the tool joins the process and becomes a part of it. AI will be, and already is, part of the evolution. It is part of the process.

Still with me? Good.

If AI is used in a respectful and thoughtful way, it can be a sounding board. In a sense, it is not so different than talking through ideas with a partner or friend.

Imagine this: you have written the entire piece that you’d been working on, but you are struggling with pulling together a closing paragraph. Ask AI to give you a couple of sentences to close with as a jumping off point.

Imagine this: A bout of writer’s block is pounding your brain like a sledgehammer. You need some words to kickstart the creativity. You may ask AI for ‘words related to’ or ’headings related to’ the subject you are writing about.

The problem is not the existence of AI. After all, life, technology, and times move forward, they always do. The problem is the temptation to let AI do all the work. If AI replaces the process of writing in its entirety, then we have lost something, and something special at that. We will have lost creativity. We will have lost imagination, and we will have lost the true human sense of authenticity. Using AI in its entirety can give a piece of writing that reads well, but there is an oddness to it, as if the personality has been stripped away. Technically it may be fine, perfect even. But emotionally, it is forgettable.

If I gave you a dollar for the number of times I have seen this question on a forum, you would be rich. The question is, “Can I use AI to write my book?” The first thought that lands with me is ‘yes you can, but it would put me off of reading your work.’ Readers can tell when they read a book or an article whether AI has been used. The human centre of the piece seems to be lacking. The ‘lived in’ nature of the wording isn’t there. Sometimes a reader may not be able to pinpoint how they know AI has been used, they just know. Does this mean I am asking you to dismiss AI outright? No, certainly not. What I am asking you to do is look at how it’s used. Not using it, doesn’t make you a purer writer. Using it in the right way, deepens the work you’re trying to show.

It’s all about intention. What do I mean? Ask yourself these questions.

• Are you using AI to avoid writing?
• Are you using AI to support it?
• Are you asking AI to produce an article to pass off as your own?
• Are you asking it to help you refine your own words?

The answer to two these questions is about “distancing yourself from your own voice.” The answer to the other two questions is about “bringing yourself closer to your own voice.” I will let you decide which answer belongs where.

There is also an honesty issue here too that we should think about, particularly if you are publishing in professional contexts. Transparency matters. If AI plays a significant role in creating a piece, pretending otherwise crosses into murky territory. Readers expect integrity and want to be able to trust an author. Once that trust is lost, it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to rebuild.

In personal writing, though, the boundaries are more flexible. If using AI helps someone express something they have struggled to articulate, is that such a terrible thing? It has the potential to be empowering and that is not something we should be stifling. Not everyone finds writing easy, and a tool that can lower that barrier, can quite often open doors rather than close them.

So, is using AI to write a dreadful thing? No—but using it without thought probably is.

Because at the end of the day, writing is not just about the finished piece. It is about the connection between the person who writes and the person who reads. If AI becomes a wall between those two points, then something has gone wrong. But if it acts as a bridge—subtle, supportive, and secondary—then it’s simply part of how writing continues to evolve.

The real question isn’t whether AI is good or bad.

It’s whether you are still doing the thinking.

Addit:

After writing this piece myself, I ran it through three separate AI detectors, just out of interest. One said, 0% AI detected. One said 14% AI detected and one said 2% AI detected. While AI detectors can help in certain environments, they are not perfect and can make errors.